Crash Sites
by wowsugarpuss
Summary: AU from pre-series. There I am in the morning, I don't like what I see.


Logan doesn't love anybody anymore. He's wiry and wasted most of the time, sparks igniting all that lighter-fluid rage inside him.

Veronica can appreciate the white hot burning flowing through his veins. She feels it too. She's not quite sure when she decided they were matching. Sometime between Logan's arm around her at Lilly's funeral and his mouth and lips and tongue wrapping around the word 'traitor' she fell for the whole act. He's relentless as his leg presses between her thighs, pushing pressure where she needs it.

If all this pressure-cooker making out continues then she's going to explode.

* * *

He doesn't think much about it. In the house of Echolls he's been taught all about consequences and he can't say it's had much effect. He's flippant. He's blasé. He's nonchalant. He doesn't give a fuck if his father flicks a belt against his back for family fun times.

Doing Veronica Mars is not like doing the Dew. It's like saying 'fuck you' -- to everyone. He thinks that's why he likes it, but he doesn't think about it much at all.

* * *

Veronica is hard-edged and flinty, like she could strike the spark that sets him off. Logan's always loved playing with matches and if Veronica was going to be a book of some kind then she would be flat-packed, cardboard, rip-off matches from the Camelot. Not that they've ever fucked there. She would be a book of matches and he could read her that way, if he were ever to bother trying.

* * *

Veronica knows Logan hates her; it's a certainty, nothing ambiguous. There's one thing that lets it slip every time. He shouts at her and his eyes are bright, they gleam through every rotten thing he says. He present, he's (not usually) correct. He hates her.

But his eyes glaze over when he kisses her and she's not sure she's even herself. It's a strange time for an identity crisis but she waits and waits and waits for him to call her Lilly. Call her Duncan, maybe. This is just a substitute role she's playing; she's got to be some stand-in for an absent outer source.

When Veronica lets herself entertain the idea that she's not, when he never says a name at all, when all his attention is focused on her -- she throws up in the bathroom after. Slow, dry heaves that plague her system, purging anything of him left inside her.

* * *

Logan watches her evolve. She's like larvae, like ivy. Some sick little parasite clinging to Lilly until she's bled dry and then Veronica gets to flourish.

Veronica turns her back on them. Veronica frees herself from a prison of hair. Veronica starts speaking and dressing like she doesn't give a fuck. Veronica. Veronica. Veronica.

Logan really, really wants to not give a fuck. He's had practiced hours pretending he doesn't. He can smile at his father if he has to, he can't smile at Veronica _fucking too good for us_ Mars. He can't. It's a weakness on his part and he hates to let her win.

It's not a smile, it's not a grin, it's cold and hard and it hurts his face to mould his lips that way, but it seems to hurt her more, so he keeps it up.

* * *

Veronica's car is almost a symbol for her life. It must have been cool once upon a time, but now it's used and abused: tagged with 'slut' and 'whore' and 'traitor'.

She crawls into it slowly when she finally makes it back to Shelly's to pick the damn thing up. There are still faint marks on the windows, even after fifteen minutes of scrubbing, but she'll be fine as long as her dad doesn't look too closely.

She doesn't know why she drives to Logan's, he hates her. He could have done this to her.

She stops at the gate but when the cameras start to move, she makes a hasty exit. She doesn't need him or Duncan or Lilly. She's tired and sloppy and aches between her legs. Maybe she wants them but 'I want' never gets anyway.

* * *

He's always the aggressor and Logan would think it kind of strange, from the new person growing inside her, but really it's just par for the course. At least this kind of torture gets her off. She watches him with hooded eyes, it unnerves him, and he'd rather she was angry, pissed off, thinking of someone else. It's too complicated to be 'them'; it's never been 'them'.

The radiator jams against her back as he thrusts her up against the wall. A muffled cry dissolved between their lips, her jeans pulled down, he doesn't leave her any time to prepare but she's so turned on she thinks she could die. She pushes down on him, seeking any dominance, any control she can get her hands on.

They grip, her little hands, his sweat-slicked skin; she can feel it through his shirt. The heat his lighter-fuel insides provide. She's reaching boiling point and she doesn't want to be around for that explosion.

Water and gas don't mix anyway. They just leave sidewalk rainbows in their wake, this pretty little reminder of fracturing the fuck up. It's deceptive, but she'll take their little afterglow. It's better than dead girls and traitors and out of town dads who trust her not to fuck the boy next-door (several zip codes over) while he's away 'on business'.

* * *

Logan drinks too much. Too much alcohol, and that's the reason Veronica's mom is gone. She blames the alcohol. She blames Logan for drinking it even though he didn't do a thing. For once it wasn't him and she grinds her teeth a little as he swallows the neck of a bottle before he goes down on her.

"Hey, I'll be nice and sterile this way, no chance of catching my cooties," is all he says in a self-deprecating tone when she tells him to stop drinking.

His tongue stings and she slaps him and he stops drinking -- for the night. She would really like to sterilize herself. Wash in vodka and forget what someone took without permission.

* * *

She has nightmares with POP GOES THE WEASLE where she never wakes up and the pressure gets too much, but he has gasoline dreams. She's not sure this new sense of self has room inside -- she can't let everybody in before that half-a-pound of tuppenny rice explodes. He's pushing her out of herself.

The problem is, if he untangles her insides he's going to see from A to B. And he'll work out all the hidden things pushed down into her gut. The sickly, bitter decomposing things that try to escape into the toilet bowl at night when she has nothing but time to think.

The stake-outs help. She needs to be busy, needs to be doing something -- even if that's Logan.

He's just a willing distraction. So she violates herself with sex and sleep deprivation in hopes of claiming her body back.

It's not working yet, but give it time.

* * *

It wasn't supposed to last, it wasn't supposed to _be_ anything. But he's not leaving and she's draped across his chest like she's safe there. Her dad will be back in the morning and she hasn't kicked Logan out yet. She feels stupid and sober and that makes her feel more stupid because she has no excuse for these things they do.

He shifts beneath her. He's restless. He wants to leave. He hates her. Logan wants to want to leave. It's the most complicated feeling he can remember since ashtray dents clouded the world over.

She's off him in a flash, a t-shirt pulled over her head like he hasn't seen a thing. But there's a scar at the top of her thigh that he could only know one way.

"My dad'll be home soon," is all she says in a declarative tone when he asks her, "what's up?" She can't be casual with him

* * *

Logan thinks maybe she is a slut. It's hilarious. Lilly dies and sweet, innocent, 2nd base Miss Mars starts sucking cock. There's one for the 'cause and effect' notes in his chemistry book.

Logan thinks he could write an entire book with just the things he's learned about Veronica in the last while.

Logan thinks she has potential on the cocksucking front.

Logan thinks maybe he should stop thinking about this again.

* * *

Sometimes she catches him in small domestic moments that seem too intensely intimate for her to handle. She slips into his house the back way and he's eating cereal. She walks up behind him and he's talking to himself. She goes to the bathroom and when she gets back he's just staring at his hands like they don't belong to him.

If she were someone who cared about him then that last one might worry her a little. But then maybe she should be more worried about him having sex with a girl he hates because he hates the rest of the world more and just can't tell them right.

It's all about degrees with Logan.

* * *

She's never, ever, ever going to draw a heart around him name. Not on Wallace's shoes, not in her notebook -- not ever.

That tells her everything she should really need to know.

* * *

He doesn't actually like hurting her anymore, it's just habit.

* * *

If she could stop her stomach curling when he fucks another girl, she would.

* * *

He did this. She screams inside herself -- like it could break him, like it could make a difference. Like it could change any fucking thing about this situation. She's been sleeping with her rapist… over and over and over. She can't help but confront him; she can't help but cry when she does.

It all stands out in his brain. For Logan it's big neon letters: HI ASSHOLE. He's incriminated himself enough to incriminate himself for this too. He didn't rape her, but he did have the drugs, he has no proof. His only alibi's brother promised to rip out his spleen if he went near her again. Not that he would. It wasn't his fault if freshmen didn't understand the rules of One Night Stand.

Hi asshole.

She cries and slaps him and doesn't believe him. Logan can't believe he cares. All that practiced not giving a fuck is lost in her. He wants to cry too. He hates her, he hates himself more -- thing is, he always has.

* * *

She's aching and sloppy and her dad is out of town again. Logan's on the phone again, but all he'll do is shout at her. Tell her what a bitch she is. What a whoreslutcunt she is.

If Veronica could stop her stomach curling when she thinks of him, she would.


End file.
